Over the past few months, my company has been involved in developing a new CRM system. We pretty much have our first version to a feature complete state. During this time, we’ve had one major customer who has been using it within their business. So, we’ve pretty much designed the system with as much communication and feedback from this customer as possible. That way we could aim to have something that is suitable for “real life” effectiveness in a real business environment.

What I’ve realised however, is that even with this level of feedback, the design is still lacking. When trying to use the CRM system within our own business, I find that there are important areas that just don’t work as well as they should.

What does this say to me? Well, I’m not really sure, but I think that those who design CRM systems should have this important feedback from their customers. Also, I think that they should have some skilled people who have knowledge about effective business systems and also program design. This would help the design to be as effective as possible.

By streamlining CRM software in this way, you get advantages like efficient business sysyems (for the businesses who use the CRM system), but also (from the developer’s point of view) well utilised software, and most importantly happier, more effective and growing business customers. Really a win-win for both sides.

I recently noticed that one of the top search results in Google for CRM is Wikipedia.

Disregarding the Wikipedia story for a moment, the first paragraph states:
However, CRM is not a technology itself, but rather a holistic approach to an organisation’s philosophy, placing the emphasis firmly on the customer.

The part that I’m noting in particular is “placing the emphasis firmly on the customer”. How many CRM solutions actually have their emphasis on the customer? I’ve seen many CRM systems, particularly the cheaper ones focus on sales and not the customer. They are not the same thing, and I would say that customers are more important. If you have no customers, then you have no sales. Simple.

I think it would be beneficial for CRM designers to note that they have a special opportunity to help businesses focus in the right area for improved health of their business. I believe CRM systems should teach and help businesses streamline processes and improve customer service and general relationships.

CRM is not a sales tool, it’s a system that helps your business focus on the customer, where it should be.

Now that I’ve joined you all in running my own business, I’m realising a few things about CRM. The one that stands out the most at the moment is implementing a CRM system in your business. Recently, for one of our businesses, Go Go Gadget, we have noticed some issues in the performance of one of our suppliers. Now, being very familiar with Google, I was able to discover that this particular vendor has had difficulties implementing a CRM system. Basically, they had underestimated the impact of the change to their business.

I’m noticing similar trends around me, first hand, and I’m learning the lesson quickly. So, learn from our mistakes! Make sure that you plan out your implementation, spend time dreaming of worst case scenarios, and double the time you think it will take to get everything in place.

The benefits of a quality CRM system is worth the issues however, but it’s a place that none of us enjoy being in.

Kingdom Solutions is currently in the process of developing a new CRM system. All the details are yet to be worked out, but at the moment, the package is called “Kingdom Connections” and it is built in Ruby on Rails. We are currently working with a local customer to get everything implemented and ironed out.

The main industries that would benefit from the current version would be churches, recruiters and training organisations. If anyone is interested in discussing an opportunity to take a look at Kingdom Connections, just send an email to: crm@danharper.org.

I’ve just started a new site, Better Business Systems. It’s a site that covers some issues like business process management and document management. I’ve found that businesses need a few more systems outside of customer relationship management (shock, horror!). One great thing is that it gives me a little more flexibility in writing about other business system issues and how to improve them, which I’m excited about.

So, check it out when you get the chance.